Temporal Power: A Study in Supremacy Part 64

"Majesty!" he cried, "You are right! I hand your Majesty's intended Premier over to you with the greatest, pleasure in the world! Apart from the fact of your being the King, I am compelled to admit that you have common sense!"

Laughter and cheers resounded through the room again, and the King quietly turning round, extinguished the red lamp on the table. The thirteenth light was quenched; the Day of Fate was ended. As the ominous crimson flare sank out, a sudden silence prevailed, and the King fixed his eyes on Lotys.

"From you, Madame, must come my final exoneration! If you still condemn me as a King, I shall be indeed unfortunate! If you still think well of me as a man, I shall be proud! I have to thank you, not only for my life, but for having helped me to make that life valuable! As Pasquin Leroy, I have sought to serve you,--as King, I seek to serve you still!"

The silence continued. Every man present watched the visible emotion which swept every vestige of colour from the face of Lotys, and made her eyes so feverishly bright. Every man gazed at her as she rose from her chair and came forward a little to the front of the platform. It was with a strong effort that she raised her eyes to those of the King, and in that one glance between them, the lightning flash of a resistless love tore the veil of secrecy from their souls. But she spoke out bravely.

"I thank your Majesty!" she said; "I thank you for all you have done for us as our comrade and a.s.sociate,--for all you will yet do for us as our comrade and a.s.sociate still! It is better to be a brave man than a weak King--but it is best to be a strong man and a strong king both together! You have disproved the thoughts I had of you as King! You have ratified--" here she paused, while the colour suddenly sprang to her cheeks, and her breath came pantingly and quick,--"and strengthened the thoughts I had of you as our Pasquin!" Her eyes softened with tears, though she smiled. "We have believed in you; we believe in you still!

All is as it was,--save in the one thing new,--that where we were banded together against the King, we are now united for, and with the King!"

These words were all that were needed to reawaken and confirm the enthusiasm of the Revolutionists, whose 'revolutionary' measures were now accepted and sworn to by the Crowned Head of the Realm. Thereupon, they gave themselves up to the wildest cheering.

"Comrades!" cried Paul Zouche, in the midst of the uproar; "There is one point you seem to have missed! The King,--G.o.d bless him!--doesn't see it,--Thord, glowering like an owl in his ivy-bush of hair, doesn't see it! It is only left to me to perceive the chief result of this evening's disclosures!"

All the men laughed.

"What is it, Zouche?" demanded Louis Valdor.

"Ay! What is it?" echoed Zegota.

"Speak, Zouche!" said the King; "Whatever strange conclusion your poetic brain discovers, doubt not but that we shall accept it,--from!"

"Accept it? I should think so!" cried Zouche; "You are bound to accept it whether you like it or not; there is no other way out of it!"

"Well, what is it?" repeated Zegota impatiently; "Declare it!"

"It is this;" said Zouche, "Simply this,--that, with the King as our comrade and a.s.sociate, the Revolutionary Committee is no use! It is finished! There can be no longer a Revolutionary Committee!"

"That is true!" said the King; "It may henceforth be known as a new Parliament!"

Cheer after cheer echoed through the crowded room, and while the noise was at its height a knocking was heard outside and Sholto, the hunchback father of Pequita, demanded admittance. Zegota unlocked the door, and in a few minutes the situation was explained to the astonished landlord of the Revolutionary Committee quarters. Overwhelmed at the news, and full of grat.i.tude for the kindness shown to his child, which he now knew had emanated from the King in person, he would have knelt to kiss the Royal hand, had not the monarch prevented him.

"No, my good Sholto!" he said gently; "Enough of such humility wearies me in the monotonous routine of Court life; and were it not for custom and prejudice, I would suffer no self-respecting man to abase himself before me, simply because my profession is that of King! Tell Pequita that I would not look at her, or applaud her dancing the other night, because I wished her to hate the King and to love Pasquin!--but now you must ask her for me, to love them both!"

Sholto bowed low, profoundly overcome. Was this the King against whom they had all been in league?--this simple, unaffected man, who seemed so much at home and at one with them all? Amazed and bewildered, he, by general invitation, mixed with the rest of the men, for each of whom the King had a kind and appreciative word, or a fresh pledge of his good faith and intention towards them and the reforms they sought to effect.

Von Glauben was surrounded by a group of those among whom he had made himself popular; and a hundred eager questions were asked of both him and De Launay, who were ready enough to eulogise the daring of their Royal master, and the determination with which he had resolved on making his secret foes his open friends.

"After all," said Zegota deprecatingly, "it is not so much the King whom we were against, as the Government."

"Ah! You forget, no doubt," said Von Glauben, "that the King--any King--is usually a Dummy in the hands of Government, unless, as in the present instance, he chooses to become a living Personality for himself!"

"The King has created an autocracy!" said Louis Valdor; "and it will last for his lifetime. But after----!"

"After him,--if his eldest son, Prince Humphry, comes to the Throne,--the autocracy will be continued;" said Von Glauben decisively; "For he is a young man who is singularly fond of having his own way!"

The conversation now became general; and the big, bare, common room a.s.sumed in a few minutes almost the aspect of a Royal levee. This was curious enough,--and furnished food for meditation to Professor von Glauben, who was considerably excited by the dramatic denouement of the Day of Fate,--a climax for which neither he nor Sir Roger had been in the least prepared. He said something of it to Sir Roger who was watching Lotys.

"You look at the woman," he said; "I look at the man! Do you think this drama is finished?"

"Not yet!" answered De Launay curtly; "Nor is the danger over!"

The hum of talk continued; and the good feeling of friendship and unity of the a.s.semblage was intensified with every cordial handshake. When the time came to break up, someone suggested that a carriage should be sent for to convey the King and his two companions to the Palace. Whereat the monarch laughed aloud and right joyously.

"By my faith!" he exclaimed; "You, my friends, would actually pamper me already, by offering me a luxury which you yourselves do not propose to enjoy! Ah, my friends, here comes in the mischief of the monarchical system! What of your 'Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity'? Do I ask to have anything different to yourselves? Can I not walk, even as you do?

Have I not walked to, and from these meetings often? And even so, I purpose to walk now! If you are true Revolutionists--as I am--do not reverse your own theories! You complain,--and justly,--that a king is over-flattered; do not then flatter him yourselves by insisting on such convenience for him as he does not even demand at your hands!"

"You take us too literally, Sir," said Louis Valdor; "Even Revolutionists owe respect to their chief!"

"Sergius Thord is your Chief, my friend!" replied the monarch; "And, from a Revolutionary point of view, mine! But you have never thought of sending _him_ anywhere in a carriage! Ah!--what children we are! What slaves of convention! 'Liberty, Equality and Fraternity' have been the ideals of ages;--yet despite them, we are always ready to follow a Leader,--and form ourselves into one body under a Head!"

"Provided the Head has brains in it!" said Zouche. "But otherwise--"

"You cut it off!" laughed the monarch--"and quite right too!"

They now began to separate. The hunchback Sholto explained that it was long after midnight, and that he had already put out all the lights in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Whereupon the King, turning to Sergius Thord said: "Farewell for the moment, Sergius! Come to me at the Palace with the whole plan of the meeting you are now organising; I shall hold myself ready to fall in with your plans! Gather your thousands, and--leave the rest to me!"

Thord clasped his extended hand,--and was moved by a curious instinct to bend down low over it after the fashion of a courtier, but restrained himself almost by force. The men began to move; one after the other bade good-night to the King--then to Thord, and last to Lotys, who, drawing on her cloak, prepared to leave also.

"I will see you safely down the stairs," said the King smilingly, to her. "It is not the first time I have done so! How now, Zouche?"

Paul Zouche stood before him, his eyes full of a strange mingled pathos and scorn.

"I have to thank your Majesty," he said slowly, "for something I do not in the least value,--Fame! It has come too late! Had it been my portion three years ago, the woman I loved would have been proud of me, and I should have been happy! She is dead now--and nothing matters!"

The King was silent. There was something both solemn and pitiful about this wreck of manhood which was still kept alive by the fire of genius.

"With one word you might have saved me--and her!" he went on. "When you came to the Throne,--and all the wretched versifiers in the kingdom were scribbling twaddle in the way of 'Coronation odes' and medleys, I wrote 'The Song of Freedom' for your glory! All the people of the land know that song now!--but you might have known it then! For now it is too late!--too late to call her back;--too late to give me peace!"

He paused;--then--without another word--turned, and went out.

"Poor Zouche!" said the King gently; "I accept his reproach and understand it! He is right! The recognition of his genius is one of the thousand chances I have missed! But, as G.o.d lives, I will miss no more!"

A great quietude fell on the house as the Revolutionary Committee dispersed. The last to leave was the King, his two friends, and Lotys.

Lotys declined all escort somewhat imperatively, refusing to allow Sergius Thord to see her to her own home.

"I must be alone!" she said; "Do you not understand! I want to think--I want to realise our change of position. I cannot talk to you, Sergius,--no--not till to-morrow--you must let me be!"

He drew back, chilled and hurt by her tone, but forbore to press his company on her. With another farewell to the King, he stood at the top of the long dark winding stair watching the group descend,--first Von Glauben, next De Launay,--thirdly, the King,--and lastly, Lotys.

"Good-night!" he called, as her white robes vanished in the gloom.

"Good-night!" she answered tremulously, as she disappeared.

And he, returning to the empty room, stared vacantly at the table draped with black, and the funeral urn set upon it,--stared at the empty chairs and bare walls, and listened as it were, to the midnight silence,--realising that he as Chief of the Revolutionary Committee, was no longer a chief but a servant!--and that the power he sought--that power which he had endeavoured to attain in order that he might make of Lotys, as he had said, 'a queen among women!' was only to be won through,--the King! The King knew all his secret plans and his aims,--he held the clue to the whole network of his Revolutionary organisation,--and the only chance he now had of ever arriving at the highest goal of his ambition was in the King's hands! Thus was he,--Socialist and Revolutionist,--made subject to the Throne; the very rules he had drawn up for himself and his Committee making it impossible that he could be otherwise than loyal, to a monarch who was at the same time his comrade!

Meanwhile, in the thick darkness of the hall below, while Von Glauben and De Launay were groping their way to the door which was cautiously held open by Sholto, Lotys, moving with hesitating steps down the stairs, felt rather than saw a head turned back upon her,--a flash of eyes in the darkness, and heard her name breathed softly: